Navigating a food labyrinth

Former Barenaked Lady will guide viewers to illicit eateries and off-the-radar restaurants in places such as L.A., Chicago, Toronto and New Orleans

Illegal Eater

The Canadian Press

Former Barenaked Ladies singer Steven Page will guide viewers to illicit eateries and off-the-radar restaurants in places such as L.A., Chicago, Toronto and New Orleans in his new show called Illegal Eater.

Life as a touring musician, although exciting, can be monotonous. Just ask Steven Page.

The Toronto songwriter has spent a large part of the past 25 years on the road, passing through cities and towns that all too often seem tediously similar.

“One of the most depressing things about touring sometimes is if you don’t look carefully, every city looks exactly the same,” said the former Barenaked Lady.

To keep the blandness at bay, Page said he’s always sought out and savoured the special food scene that can be found in each place if you look hard enough.

“For me, food is just a big part of the culture of a town and, everywhere I’ve travelled, I really tried to make a point of what makes each place unique,” Page said.

That’s why he jumped at an offer to host a new reality TV show, The Illegal Eater, which premieres on Travel + Escape this fall. Page starting filming the show in early April and spoke with the Star by phone before boarding a flight to Charleston, S.C., to shoot an episode. As host, Page said he will guide viewers into the alternative food scenes of various cities, where underground eateries skirt the rules to offer specialty delicacies, and illicit restaurants serve the goods without oversight or advertisement.

Sometimes it’s Korean cuisine sold directly from an elderly woman’s kitchen, or a well-regarded local chef having a one-night stand cooking an ambitious array of dishes at an unlicensed “pop-up” supper club, Page explained. There’s a whole uncharted gastronomical world out there to explore.

“Without getting too pedantic about it, we get a chance to see this stuff in action, and talk to people who are both consuming it and producing it, and find out why,” said Page.

The 13-episode series will see the Canadian musician tread into shadowy culinary locales in New Orleans, Atlanta, Mississippi, Los Angeles and Chicago, as well as a Canadian jaunt through Ottawa and Toronto, he said.

Naturally, as a professional musician, Page will play a role in the sound of the show. He penned the theme song and will help select the incidental music for each episode, hoping to include indie music from each city to underscore the underground theme of the show, he said.

When asked why he’s a musician hosting a food show, Page said that he’s always dreamed of doing this.

“One of the things I used to say to people is that if I were ever to do a TV show, it’d be a food show,” he said. “I love to cook. I love to read about it. I love the history of it and I felt like I actually had something to offer that way, too.”

Some of his most interesting encounters so far involve restaurants that are “pushed underground” to serve dishes that are blocked by the bureaucracy of health regulations, said Page. Wild game, for example, is outlawed as a restaurant meal in certain U.S. districts, he said, while sourcing pig’s blood for blood sausage or pudding can also be tricky.

And although these eateries are unlawful, Page insisted he wouldn’t visit anywhere unhealthy and has avoided any particularly precarious bistros.

“I love the fact that there is this labyrinthine effort that they have to make in order to make their products,” said Page. “That’s really the essence of it. It’s about the quest for real food and, unfortunately, it’s pushed underground sometimes.”